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The best first-person shooters of 2012 according to me, your humble narrator.

2012 was a pretty great year for first-person shooters.

The make-every-shooter-as-brown-as-possible trend has apparently worn off, and the shooters of this past year quite literally popped with color.

Whether this was the greens and blues of the jungle, or the radioactive orange of an alien ship, and whether you were playing on PC or Xbox 360, 2012 was a good (and aesthetically pleasing) year for the genre.

Actually, I say that with no shortage of surprise. I was quite burnt out on the FPS genre to be quite honest.

I was never much of a Call of Duty fan, and I'd found myself largely playing just Counter-Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2 for years, missing out on many games I probably should have played like Far Cry 2 (though I rather liked the original Far Cry actually) and Metro: 2033.

But 2012 sucked me back in with its bevy of colorful sequels, and even though none of these games blew me away like Half-Life 2 did back when it came out, or frightened me the way DOOM frightened me years ago, I still had a good time with each one I played.

Which, by the way, is the basis for this list: these are just games I played personally. I didn't play everything this year, and certainly not every shooter. Feel free to chime in with your picks and disagreements in the comments.

5. Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Call of Duty games come out like clockwork every year, but Black Ops II was actually a pretty nice improvement over Modern Warfare III in my humblest of opinions.

There really is something thrilling about skiing down a hill only to launch high up into the air with your jetpack when you hit the bottom all while shooting the hell out of an enemy player and trying to stay alive.

Hi-Rez Studios

3. Borderlands 2

I thought the sequel was a huge improvement over the original Borderlands. It's funnier, more colorful, and more varied than the first game, and most of the DLC has been pretty good, too.

The game would have been better with better co-op, especially in terms of loot-sharing.

Even in single-player the loot---that endless stream of marginally better guns---can be a bit painful.

Lest you think I have only complaints, let me assure you: Borderlands 2 looks and plays great, and I enjoyed both its sense of humor and story quite a bit. It's one of those "love it or hate it" games, though, so buyer beware. Oh, and it has absolutely fantastic Easter Eggs....

That being said, what a glorious shooter Far Cry 3 is. The RPG-lite system works great, and the mechanics are just about as tight as any FPS I've ever played. Raiding enemy bases without being spotted is a blast, and zipping across the island on a 4-Runner with reckless disregard for personal safety is truly fun. So is diving off your hangglider and whipping out your wing-suit before parachuting to safety (or death) only to be attacked and mauled by a tiger.

The story itself is also pretty interesting if you can get past how ludicrous it all is. For my part, I take it as something of a half-baked critique of the genre, though it might have been more profound if third-person shooter Spec Ops: The Line hadn't been so powerful. Top the whole thing off with a pretty decent suite of multiplayer and you get yourself a well-deserved silver medal.

For one thing, despite being rather spartan, its story is at once tragic and moving. When you're not running-and-gunning your way through the fairly standard, linear levels, you're experiencing the shattering of an AI's mind. It's a story about love and sacrifice, wrapped up in a FPS package. 343 Industries somehow managed to breathe new life into the franchise, and the result is pretty much magic.

Add to that the excellent multiplayer (both co-op with ongoing free DLC and PvP) and you have one of the best shooter packages in years. And actually, it's a game that grew on me as I played it. Typically I can get a pretty good feeling for a game right out of the box, but Halo 4 was a bit of a sleeper hit for me.